Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

One of the giants of horror gets a game worthy of his name.

As an impressionable teenager, I greedily devoured the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. There was something about the indifferent, otherworldly nature of his horrors that really made his stories appealing. Sure, he had his tales of human depravity but, compared to the monsters of Steven King and Clive Barker, the really terrifying thing about Lovecraft's evil monsters was that they didn't take pleasure in human suffering; they were completely unconcerned with how their actions (or in some cases, their very presence) might wreak havoc on the minds and bodies of regular people.

While it makes great material for short stories, that kind of approach just doesn't work as well in movies or video games. I mean, honestly, which sounds like the more marketable, understandable movie: one where zombies get blasted apart by shotguns or one where a strange color emerges from a meteorite to turn plants to ash and people to jelly? The complete lack of a human perspective in Lovecraft's monsters makes it tough to translate it beyond the printed page.

But where so many others have failed, Headfirst Productions has succeeded with Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. They've managed to create a genuinely entertaining game that's also true to Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories. Naturally, there are some concessions here and there but even August Derleth himself would be hard-pressed to call this an unfaithful adaptation -- and not just because he's dead. Lovecraft fans will recognize that the game takes the basic plot of The Shadow Over Innsmouth and adds healthy touches of many of his other stories, mostly The Shadow Out of Time.

The game opens as our hero, Jack Walters, is called in to investigate some strange goings on at a perfectly eerie house. The game launches you right into the action, teaching you all about the controls and letting you get a feel for how the world operates. Jack has a truly bizarre experience inside the house and lands himself in the looney bin. Flash-forward to several years later and Jack finds himself out of the nuthouse but suffering from a serious case of amnesia. He's taken a job as a private eye and is called on to investigate a disappearance in the town of Innsmouth. As he begins to unravel the mystery of the disappearance, he'll also discover a truly terrifying secret behind the town itself and start to figure out just what went on in the insane asylum.

The first thing you'll notice about the game is its thoroughly convincing atmosphere. It's a bit hard to pin down just what it is that makes the game so convincingly eerie. The cumulative effect of the grainy visuals, gloomy environments, HUD-less interface, good story and encounters that are as deadly as they are frightening all work to make the game scarier and more unsettling than most horror games. I won't spoil the story by spilling any of the details here but it's full of great moments of genuine terror.

That's not to say that the game is without its faults. The overall difficultly level seems pitched a little too high, particularly when you consider that this game appeals more to Dreamfall fans than Splinter Cell junkies. The stealth sequences and shootouts are relatively merciless and it's all too easy to make a fatal mistake even in the early stages of the game.

The early levels focus on lots of sneaking around. Since the residents of Innsmouth seem none too cooperative (if not downright hostile), you'll spend a lot of time trying to find surreptitious ways to get around town. Sneaking through sewers and back alleys is pretty much the main focus of these early levels. The odd puzzle is thrown in here and there as well but most of these won't be too taxing. Soon enough, however, you'll reach a point where the game really starts trying to kill you...and it's very, very good at this.

For the next few hours you'll find yourself in one of two positions: either trying to sneak past enemies who would kill you on sight, and trying to run past enemies who have already spotted you. Unfortunately, there's usually a set solution to these problems and it's largely a matter of trial and error to find it. I genuinely dislike the "keep dying until you figure it out" approach to game design, particularly when it's used so much. At least in games like Commandos, you have the option to succeed in a variety of ways. Here you're fated to die until you figure out exactly where you need to hide or exactly how to time your jumps.

Not surprisingly, you'll spend a lot of time reloading your last save and taking another stab at it. Rather than allowing you to save whenever you want, Dark Corners of the Earth relies on checkpoints. While the spacing of checkpoints increases the tension, it can only be sustained so long. Having to replay a lengthy section four or five times after getting killed just before the next checkpoint does happen a lot in this game. Fortunately, some of the really difficult parts usually come right after a checkpoint so there's not a ton of backtracking, but it still disturbs the pace of the game a little.

Happily, none of the control problems of the Xbox version seem to be present on the PC. The mouse-aiming is still a bit swimmy but it's not all that aggravating. Manipulating the various objects in the environment is a lot more predictable and reliable with the mouse and keyboard. Still, the game's not without its problems in this regard. Mostly it has to do with manipulating small objects that are placed next to other objects. Trying to activate the bolt on a door for instance might very well lead to you opening the door by accident. It's obnoxious under most circumstances; when you've got a posse of shotgun-toting fish-heads after you, it can be deadly.